Month: October 2020

I work with a lot of people who are trying to change something in their teams, small firms, or large organizations.

 

One of the things I’ve noticed over the years of doing this work is that there can be a tendency to want to make a big, dramatic, “transformational” change in one fell swoop. To take on a new strategy, for example, or to change the culture of a team.

 

My observation is that this approach rarely works, regardless of whether you’re a small enterprise (a few lawyers who run a Trusts and Estates firm, say) or a huge, well-resourced company.

 

Here’s what I’ve seen:

 

1. “People don’t resist change; they resist being changed.”

 

This idea comes from Peter Senge, one of the preeminent writers on learning and change. Dramatic change is, by its nature, imposed on a team or company. Because the team is not invited to discover their own path, they resist change.

 

2. Change can be fast or it can be sticky.

 

Fast change creates a lot of activity very quickly—but that fades. I’ve seen companies spend tens of millions of dollars to convene thousands of managers in a huge conference center to create a shift in culture. Such efforts rarely have a lasting effect. When people go back to their desks, they revert back to their normal behavior. The system supports staying comfortable instead of shifting.

 

The most successful change efforts focus on changing small behaviors in small groups. They recognize that adoption isn’t an “all at once” phenomenon and that the success of one team will help others work toward success, too.

 

3. Appreciate what you do well and don’t stop what you’re doing.

 

Whatever you’ve done to get to this point has worked, at least somewhat (otherwise, you’d be starting something new, not changing something existing)!

 

When we want to change, we often lose sight of what does work. If we want to be more entrepreneurial, for instance, we might start by seeing how our current approach to detailed planning has helped us over the years.

 

Appreciating what happens already also applies to work itself. I was recently working with a business owner who wanted to create a new product to complement his existing services business, so that he could be less involved in the day-to-day of the work. His plan (fantasy?) was to take a month off from his normal responsibilities and create his product.

 

Needless to say, that plan didn’t work—he received a lucrative offer from a consulting client and was drawn back into delivering services. To make the kind of change that he seeks, he’ll have to take a more incremental approach, working a few hours at a time on his product while he keeps his business up and running.

 

What about you? What are the ways you’ve seen change efforts work (and not)?

 

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I’ve written a lot in this space about anxiety and uncertainty which, I think, are good things to get comfortable with.

 

I believe that what is needed to be a successful leader in our modern world is to shift from a stance of knowing to one of curiosity.

 

I recently interviewed my friend and mentor Roger Martin for an upcoming podcast episode. Roger’s just written a great new book called When More Is Not Better about, among other things, how the goal of economic growth has subsumed so many other important aspects of American life.

 

The central idea of the book is that we need to think in terms of systems—something that I both wholeheartedly agree with and something that, in many ways, Roger helped me see earlier in my career.

 

There’s a number of interesting things that happen when you make the shift to thinking in terms of systems, but I’d like to highlight one here: recognizing the importance of balancing feedback loops.

 

Many systems exhibit what’s called homeostasis, a tendency to revert to some default set point. This is often by design. Think about how a thermostat turns on the heat when the temperature is too low and shuts it off when the temperature reaches the goal.

 

But sometimes homeostasis shows up in ways that we don’t always expect.

 

Consider, for example, a manufacturer trying to increase profitability. It might set goals to reduce costs, causing the VP of procurement to source the cheapest raw materials she can find. In most companies, the VP would be rewarded for her work helping the company meet its targets.

 

But, as systems thinkers, our analysis can’t end there. Using cheaper raw materials has a consequence. In the instance I’m thinking of, it introduced quality problems in the finished product and additional waste in the form of raw materials that can’t be used.

 

These consequences—which balance the original efforts to make the system run more cheaply—often happen after a delay. It’s not clear that they’re caused by past choices because they show up as a different problem (one that the VP of quality now has to figure out).

 

This isn’t a concept that just applies to manufacturing. A software company might reduce testing in an effort to get its products out the door faster. Or a law firm might try to save money by reducing the number of support staff—only to see billable hours fall as attorneys have to spend more time managing administrative details.

 

The most successful leaders recognize that every choice represents a point of tension. They consider their system holistically. Their goal isn’t necessarily to be the cheapest or the fastest. Rather, their goal is to learn and experiment with their system. By attending to all its parts, they can balance their goals across a number of dimensions and, ultimately, deliver outstanding value.

 

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It’s the week of the launch of my new podcast, The Breakdown™ with Chris Clearfield, and I find myself feeling anxious about it.

 

For me, that anxiety shows up in a couple of ways.

 

It shows up when I wake up in the middle of the night and can’t go back to sleep.

 

It shows up in my body—back pain, knee pain. Everything feels all akimbo. (This is a good tell for me. I had back pain when I was younger that only went away when I realized it was a sign that I had emotions I could not yet feel or voice.)

 

I’ve been trying to figure out why, and where the anxiety comes from. After all, it’s just a podcast!

 

But there are clues.

 

When I notice my anxiety, it gets stronger. It makes me want to move away from the process. To delay the launch. To postpone it. To say that we are too busy. To, as I say with my partner, “drop the rope,” like walking away from a game of tug-of-war when it gets too hard.

So, where does the anxiety come from?

 

What I’m doing here in my work and my life is, as a well-known journalist I know put it, ploughing new ground.

 

It’s not alien ground—I’m not plowing the Moon or Mars. But it’s new ground for me.

 

There are hundreds of thousands of podcasts out there. Sure. Absolutely.

 

But I’ve never launched a podcast before.

 

I’m anxious because I’m worried that I will fail, that I will look foolish. That I will be rejected, that what I do won’t be “good enough.”

 

I’ve had the good fortune of having a tremendous amount of success in my life. A lot of that stems from privilege—being born a white man at this time in this place. Having educated parents. Social capital.

 

A lot of my success has to do with luck and happenstance. A neighborhood friend who went away to boarding school (the North Carolina School of Science and Math) and made it easier for me to walk that path—and move to environments (first NCSSM, then Harvard) that allowed me to flourish.

 

Some of my success comes from the way my brain works to solve crazy complex problems. By bringing focus. By seeing how the parts come together to form a whole and by seeing the relationships between things.

 

A lot of that goes back to my biology and how I learned to operate growing up—understanding relationships between people helped me stay safe in a world where I didn’t always feel like I fit in.

 

I’ve gotten better with practice. When I studied physics, for example, I was never very good at solving problems by grinding out equations. But I delighted in moving between the details and the big picture.

 

My journey of personal growth started in my thirties when I became a parent. As my son grew, I was able to understand how much I operated in a fixed mindset, one in which I’m defined by my achievements and wary of making mistakes. Now I try to operate in a growth mindset, one in which I acknowledge that the primary pursuit of life is learning. (Carol Dweck’s book changed my life—thank you, Carol!)

This wasn’t just a shift; it was the start of a new journey for me. I’m slowly dropping the stance of self-judgment to one of growth.

 

It’s fun to compare the podcast with Meltdown, about which I never felt much anxiety. I’m immensely proud of the work that András and I did in that book. The writing is tight, the stories are fun, and we take a series of extremely complex concepts and break them down in a way that’s accessible.

 

But writing the book never really felt like a risk. The thing about writing a book is you have a lot of people looking at it. Our editor and team at Penguin Press were fantastic. Our agents were great. We received excellent input from academics and some talented folks like the organizational psychologist Adam Grant.

 

We had a lot of support and a lot of chances to get it right. We also had skills, dedication, and 15 months to research, interview, write, and edit.

 

I had an amazing coauthor who I loved working with. We improved each other’s writing throughout the whole process.

But you know what did feel like a risk? Promoting the book.

 

Sure, I was happy to show up and give talks; that’s just part of the process. But the act of putting work out there to try to get attention for the ideas in Meltdown—I just didn’t do that. For nearly two years!

 

Instead of marketing the book, I waited for people to discover it (fortunately, some did and it resonated with them—something that’s led to interesting professional opportunities). I didn’t write, I didn’t blog, I didn’t try to connect with an audience. That’s what felt scary to me.

What if no one reads my stuff? What if I promote the book and no one likes it? 

 

Walking my path—journaling, therapy, meditation, coaching—helped me understand that fear was limiting me. Since then, I’ve been working with that fear. I try to treat it like a friend who is just trying to keep me safe.

 

I’ve also put together a great team that helps me with the work. It’s hard enough to overcome fear, and even harder when there are lots of other barriers along the road (like having to format emails and set up a mailing list).

 

That’s the journey I’ve been on these past six months. (Thanks for being here with me!)

 

So, back to the podcast: I was talking with my partner about my anxiety and it struck me that one of the things going on here is that I know this podcast isn’t great yet.

 

I’m producing content that doesn’t live up to my own standards. It’s in a medium I haven’t worked in before with an audience that I’m still defining.

 

When I had that realization, everything clicked into place. My fear of not being good enough at this (and, of course, some fear of not being “good enough” to my core) collided with my fear of not being relevant, not being out there in the world. I was holding myself back from doing work that mattered to me.

At that moment, I was able to take some solace from the wisdom of Ira Glass.

 

If you’re not familiar with his work, Glass is one of the most preëminent storytellers in the world. He practically invented the story-based radio genre.

 

Beyond the wildly successful show This American Life, Glass has produced film and TV projects, the popular podcast series Serial. He has also paved the way for amazing creatives like Alex Blumberg, the creator of the podcast StartUp and the CEO of Gimlet Media.

 

Glass is a master storyteller.

 

Ira Glass has this amazing piece of tape where he talks about the creative process. As a creator, he says, you want to create because you love the medium. And that love of the medium means that you have really good taste.

 

But, at the beginning of your journey, there’s what Ira Glass calls a gap:

 

For the first couple of years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good. It’s not that great… it’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good. But it’s not quite that good….

But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, your taste is still killer. Your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you. You can tell that it’s still sort of crappy.

I want to make a podcast because I love podcasts. I love the deep connection that audio allows. I love the medium for what I learn from it and the feelings it evokes in me.

 

And that’s where my anxiety comes from. I know what great work sounds like. I have a belief, an old story, that I should be good at stuff. And I know that I’m not yet very good at this yet.

 

At this moment, I choose to fully inhabit that gap. Not only does my work not measure up to my own standards, I’m releasing it into the world for others to possibly agree with that assessment.

 

That’s not intended to be self-critical or self-effacing. I’m actually doing work that I think is kind of crappy… or, at least, not great.

But the best thing I can do right now is to release mediocre work.

 

As Ira Glass puts it, “The most important possible thing you could do is do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work.”

 

I know that I’m going to be much better at this in three months. I’ll be even better in six months, nine months. At some point, I’ll recognize that I’ve started doing really good work, maybe even the occasional piece of great work.

 

Until then, I’ll keep growing, keep trying to do better.

Great work is a journey, not a destination. 

 

These are the kind of conversations that I’m going to be having on my podcast. Conversations about what’s hard about growth. Building a business. Walking your own path as an entrepreneur, as a creative, as a leader trying to break new ground.

 

Once I realized that my anxiety sprang from feeling like I had to produce great work and knowing that I wasn’t, I was able to let go of the story that my work “should” be anything at all.

I’m doing a good enough job.

 

I’m excited to get better at podcasting as a medium. And I’m really excited to use my skills to advance the art, in whatever small way I can, of solving complex problems in a way that’s relational and in touch with our humanity.

 

So, without further ado, I’m excited to welcome you to my podcast. It’s no Serial (yet), but we’ve captured some great conversations with people that I truly respect. We’re talking about stuff that matters in this unique moment and I’m excited to share these with you. For me, it’s also a great exercise in showing my vulnerability and learning by doing. I’m looking forward to learning with you by my side.

 

Thank you for being part of this journey with me.

 

Let me know what you think. I look forward to hearing from you.

 

Listen to The Breakdown™ with Chris Clearfield here:

 

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Now every gambler knows

The secret to survivin’

Is knowin’ what to throw away

And knowin’ what to keep.

 

-“The Gambler” by Kenny Rogers

 

Q3 of this year turned out to be a lot.

 

Sometimes I felt overwhelmed (OK, a lot of the time, as regular readers will know). Work, parenting, moving, a pandemic—it adds up!

 

At work, my team and I tackled projects that felt meaty and satisfying.

 

I lead some big and interesting enterprise consulting engagements. I strengthened relationships with my coaching clients and invested in professional development to deepen my craft.

 

Our team experimented with using paid traffic to explore a few different approaches to marketing my coaching work, which my executive assistant Rahne initiated and drove via our Objective and Key Results (OKR) process. This effort allowed us to test different niches.

 

We are also launching a podcast and wrestling with our process there to make it manageable.

 

One of the things that we noticed was that we had too many Q3 priorities.

 

It showed up in many ways, but something I noticed was that one of our Objectives was different from the others.

 

Said objective was to explore the idea of an online fulfillment-based bookshop for authors.

 

The basic idea was that authors send out a lot of books. It’s nice to sign them for friends, colleagues, and business contacts. It’s also a huge hassle.

 

But what if we authors could sign a BUNCH of books at once, send them to a fulfillment service, and then drip them out as needed with a few clicks instead of heading to the post office?

 

We tried to see if others might be interested in this idea, too. We created a landing page to gather email addresses, and we ran a few ads and experiments.

 

While we had some interest, two things became quickly clear to me:

• We had a lot going on.

• My energy was pulling me toward other things.

 

Every time I was supposed to do something to advance the signed-bookshop idea, I found myself avoiding it. I felt guilty.

 

Then I realized that I was being silly. I was avoiding it for a good reason, actually: it wasn’t in our core set of competencies.

 

It was an interesting experiment, but it took up more time and effort than I hoped.

 

So, I got together with my team to discuss what we wanted to do.

 

We ultimately ended the experiment, and I learned a lot about how to gracefully kill a project.

 

Here’s what I learned, in three easily digestible steps:

 

1. Follow the energy.

 

Tune in to where your energy is actually going; procrastination often serves us in some way. In this instance, it was telling me that my energy directed toward other things.

 

Even Netflix binges might mean that there’s a mismatch between your stated goals and your hidden commitments.

 

2. Ask your colleagues what they think.

 

Most of us don’t operate in a vacuum, which would be very loud (or very quiet depending on the kind of vacuum).

 

So, seek input from your colleagues. They might see something that you miss—a compelling reason to continue the project or another reason to halt. And the participation, if done sincerely, is empowering, hopefully even to the people who ran the project that you’re thinking of ending.

 

3. Celebrate the end of your project.

 

We celebrated the end of our project. With a bit more planning, we could have given it a jolly good sendoff.

 

 

Instead, our fully remote team had to settle for a champagne gif in Slack.

 

The important thing was that we acknowledged that we weren’t going to pursue our Objective. We hadn’t failed—like nearly every project, it had been an experiment!

 

I took a moment to especially thank my marketing specialist Gabe, who had taken point on this Objective, and then we moved on.

 

Final reflections

 

One of the cornerstones of the OKR process is flexibility. As long as you’re thoughtful, you can add and drop Objectives as your situation changes.

 

I love that the OKR process gave us the power to see how some of our work didn’t quite fit in. And I love how it allowed us to drop something in order to move forward with what was working—without any shame or stigma.

 

My only regret is that we didn’t plan ahead a bit more to have actual chocolate or wine to celebrate.

 

Have you killed projects at work? How did you do it and what did you learn?

How science can help you figure it out

 

How do I know what the next right thing to do is in my business?

 

That not knowing—it’s an anxiety that many of us feel, particularly those of us who run our own businesses.

 

In my work as a business consultant and coach, I am asked variations of this question—what’s the next right thing?—all the time:

 

“How should I empower my team to make better decisions?”

 

“What should I do to grow my legal practice?”

 

“How do I work with the kind of clients that I want to?”

 

These are useful questions, but sometimes they can lead consultants, coaches, and mentors to what writer Michael Bungay Stanier calls the “Advice Trap” (also the name of his new book).

 

This is particularly true if such questions are paired with the frequent companion question, “How have other people solved this problem?”

 

The answer is: it doesn’t really matter.

 

Sure, it’s good to look around and see what other people are doing.

 

But other people… well, they’re not you!

 

The things that brought them to their problem are different than what brought you to the problem (even if it looks the same). Your superpowers are different than theirs; so are your challenges.

 

So, what to do?

Run experiments.

 

I was recently working with a lawyer who was trying to figure out where to place her marketing focus. She already has a niche and a successful practice, but she wants to attract more of the right kinds of clients.

 

What should she focus on? Video? Facebook ads? Blog posts? A newsletter?

 

The answer is: no one knows.

 

Sure, there are experts in each of these fields who would provide their own points of view.

 

But the real answer is: try, measure, and reflect.

 

When I was an undergrad working in a biochemistry lab, my professor used to say that his favorite experiment was one that yielded insight regardless of the outcome.

 

To do that in the business world, you have to have a bit of a system. You have to try something for long enough to know whether or not it’s working.

 

You have to choose a strategy and change a small part of your approach as you go along—the text of an ad, for example—rather than jumping between strategies before you’ve gathered enough data to tell whether something is working or not.

 

It’s not limited to marketing, either. You can develop experiments to evaluate a product before you launch it, to expand your business, or even to focus your practice around a specific niche.

 

I’ll share more about my own tests next week, but, in the meantime, I’m curious: what do you want to test next?

 

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